


your mother's son

by queen_edmund_pevensie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s13e21 Beat the Devil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 18:22:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30143685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_edmund_pevensie/pseuds/queen_edmund_pevensie
Summary: Sam does not materialize on the horizon.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Mary Winchester, Mary Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	your mother's son

Mary does a quick headcount. Two angels, a bunch of humans, Dean grimacing at her, coming towards her. It’s so strange, to be mother and friend to her grown sons, but it’s one of the only things she understands about the modern world, and even here, it feels good to hold him. Dean slots in her arms like he’s been waiting forty years for this. Dean trembles in her arms like he hasn’t literally been to Hell and back and is instead the toddler she left behind. Sam isn’t materializing at the horizon.

“Where’s Sam?” She detaches from Dean. Dean doesn’t answer. She wonders if he can. His right hand is clenched in a fist, but his left hand is clutching at the hem of her jacket, like he doesn’t even realize, like he’s trying to tether himself to the earth. Dean’s crying. Her instincts war — kill whoever did this to her boys, comfort the son who stands broken in front of her.

Castiel answers. “He’s dead. Mary — I’m so sorry.” 

He’s not sorry enough. And Castiel is going to take the brunt of her anger if she can’t calm down. Punching an angel — even a powered down, regular grade angel — doesn’t seem like a good idea, and he’s remorseful, like he should have done more to save Sam. He should have done more to save Sam. Her boys came to rescue her. She’s not the mother she wants to be; she’s a hunter and a killer, but Dean hasn’t let go of her jacket and he hasn’t said a word, hasn’t made a noise, and she’s still trying to understand what happened, who did this to them, and who she’s supposed to kill. Since Castiel is the only one brave enough to look in their direction, well he seems like a good enough target as any. 

Mary rubs Dean’s arm anyway, the facsimile of comfort. Something about the way his face is closed off is telling her there’s nothing to do, nothing to kill, no vengeance to exact. A hunter’s worst nightmare. 

“It was vampires — in the tunnel,” Castiel says. “We need to keep moving. Is Jack with you?” 

Mary nods, keeping a hand on her grown son. Her grown son who risked everything to come save her. Will it still be worth it to him when he finds out that she can’t leave, now that he’s lost more than everything?

She leads them back in silence. At least, she thinks, a little relieved, they’re not just here for her. They came for Jack too, and if they can rescue him, then maybe Dean will be okay. Will feel like he still accomplished his mission, will keep living back home, taking care of this other creature who’s out of time like she is. But Dean still hasn’t said a word to anyone.

Jack knows they’ve arrived before they come over the hill. He rushes to meet them, runs loosely in spite of the wings she knows he has, runs like the little boy he is, throws himself into Castiel’s arms and does the same half-hopeful headcount Mary did not three minutes ago, his face falling when he realizes who’s missing. 

Castiel takes him aside, and Jack starts to tantrum, lets loose on the angels who brought them together. 

_Why didn’t you bring him back!_

It’s not even a question. It’s a demand. Dean is unpacking his bag, fishing out a canteen, his hands are shaking. “Dean,” Mary says softly, her hand on his back. She wants to demand too. What’s the good of angels if they let her sons die? What’s the good of angels if they won’t or can’t protect her boys? If they’re either useless or evil? “Dean, are you okay?” 

No, he’s not okay. He’s moving, treading water. She doesn’t know what to say to him, doesn’t know if she’s even really — she thinks she should be feeling something too, some sadness, grief for the baby she lost and the son she was starting to know, who died to get her back, but she’s just…she’s just flatly angry, angry that traveling with angels couldn’t save her son, angry that her boys would risk this for her, angry at John for not letting her go when she died and making her boys’ lives miserable and tragic and bloody. 

Angry at herself.

If she tries, she can remember Dean in 1978, earnest and sad, begging her to leave John. Never being born is better than dying. It’s hazy, like a dream. She was pregnant. She’d already given Sam away to the demon. Dean plunges his hand into the water, slings his pack over his shoulder. She doesn’t know if it would have mattered. This world is proof enough of that. 

“We’ve gotta go back,” Dean says at last, shaking the water from his hands. His voice is hoarse, quiet. Old and gruff. The lines in his face are like craters. He’s far away and determined. He screws the top back on his canteen, shoves it into the side pocket of the bag. “Get his body.” 

Mary nods. Opens her mouth to tell him to give her a couple of minutes, and she’ll come with him. They’ll bring him back and she can say goodbye and then she’ll feel something besides pissed and she can bury her son. Her thirty-five year old son. She does some math in her head. It’s hard to say — she thinks he’s thirty-five, or will be soon, or is already. She’s…thirty-one, sixty-four. She feels perpetually twenty-nine, and she thinks her body is stuck somewhere in between. Maybe if she sees him, Sam, she can let go of the anger, all of the anger, shoulder some of Dean’s grief for him, but if the bells didn’t chime at that exact moment, she thinks she wouldn’t have been able to stop him from plunging himself into that nest of vamps, and then she would have had to drag both of her sons’ bodies back. 

As it is — Sam. Bloody and pale and stumbling. He’s looking everywhere except at Dean, he’s trying to smile, but something is wrong. Something more wrong than being dead or almost dead and left to rot in a tunnel in a parallel universe. 

“Sam?” Sam responds to Dean’s voice, the expression on his face clouded with shame. He can’t say anything, his face gray in the light of the dying sun. He takes another step, and Lucifer appears behind him. Stupid smug face, smirking at them all, like he’s welcome here, like anyone in any world wants to see him. Torn again — between the target of her anger and the son who’s trying hard to keep it together and put as much space as he can as quickly as he can between him and the Devil. Sam is closer. 

She all but catches him, reaches up to pull him into a hug and he scoops down to let her, let her run a hand through his hair matted with blood and mud and sweat, just for a second so that she can feel the tenseness of his muscles beneath his jacket, the way he’s trembling. His hands on her back are uncertain, resting his chin on her shoulder like he isn’t sure it’s allowed. Dean behind her, locking eyes with Sam (she can tell because he tenses, then releases himself from her hug — his chest and neck is bloody, and a wound is something she can tend to, but there isn’t one so her hands hover limply over his chest). Sam says: “He - he brought me back,” in that low, halting way he has, so quiet she can barely hear him, but Dean’s face hardens, and he glowers at the Devil even though the Devil is the only angel around who seems to be able to do the one thing she really needs angels to do, and it’s the first time since she met him that she wonders if Sam’s always had this soft spoken, nervous way about him, or if the person who beat it into him is standing thirty feet from her, eyeing Jack like he’s a piece of meat. She’d kill Lucifer, she thinks, Sam shrinking behind her as Dean finds his voice again, although she’s sure she won’t get a chance if Dean has anything to say about it. 


End file.
